Chương 47: 112 Seconds Left (3/3)

With a cold glint sharpening his pale eyes, Shi Yan profiled his target with the clinical precision of a soldier scanning terrain for weak points.

The Senior Disciple was grasping his jian with both hands, the ornate silver guard trembling in the storm's dim light. His knuckles were bone-white, bloodless and rigid, the skin stretched so taut over the joints it seemed ready to split. Yet despite the desperate strength of his grip, his hold was fundamentally compromised—the angle of his wrists betrayed instability, the subtle wobble of the blade's tip revealing a foundation built on crumbling resolve rather than martial discipline.

His fingers twitched in irregular spasms, and his chest heaved with ragged, panicked breaths that came in sharp, uneven bursts. The rhythm was chaotic, desperate—hyperventilation. A fatal error for any cultivator who relied on the steady, meditative cadence of breathing to cycle Qi smoothly through their meridians. Each gasping inhale disrupted the delicate internal flow, scattering spiritual energy like water through cracked stone.

But Shi Yan found another flaw, deeper than mere technique.

His psychological baseline is shattered, he observed with detached clarity, his eyes—cold as winter iron—scanning the subtle shift of the man's weight distribution. The senior disciple's stance leaned too far forward on the balls of his feet, his center of gravity unstable, his rear leg trembling with the strain of holding a posture his exhausted body could no longer support. Exhausted, running on adrenaline, and poisoned by rage. He'll overcommit.

On the other hand, across the twenty feet of rain-swept bedrock—slick and gleaming black beneath the storm's relentless downpour—the Senior Disciple was running his own desperate, terrified calculations. His mind raced in frantic circles, grasping for answers that refused to come.

What is this thing?! His common sense about mortals screamed in his own mind, a shrill voice of panic that clawed at the edges of sanity. His teeth ground together so hard they threatened to crack, the pressure sending sharp jolts of pain through his jaw. The metallic taste of blood seeped from his gums.

It has no Spiritual Root! It has no Dantians! The fundamental laws of cultivation, drilled into him since childhood, shrieked their impossibility. It shouldn't even be able to lift a heavy sword without tearing its own muscles, yet it walked through a wind barrier like it was empty air! The memory of that moment—of watching this… creature… step through a technique that should have flayed flesh from bone—sent a fresh wave of icy terror down his spine.

The Senior Disciple felt the agonizing emptiness in his lower abdomen, a hollow void where his Dantian had once been a roiling furnace of spiritual power. Now it was a dying ember, barely flickering.

Sustaining the golden array and forcing open the 'Eye of the Clear Sky' had drained him immensely, wringing his reserves dry like cloth twisted until the fibers snapped. His meridians ached with the phantom pain of channels stretched beyond their capacity, the delicate pathways scorched and raw from overuse.

He had, at best, twenty-five percent of his Qi remaining—a pitiful fraction that couldn't sustain more than a single desperate technique. He couldn't sustain a protracted battle, and he certainly couldn't outrun a creature that moved like a teleporting shadow, closing impossible distances in the blink of an eye.

But as he looked down at the unmoving, wide-eyed corpse of his youngest martial brother—the boy's face frozen in eternal terror, rain pooling in his unseeing eyes—an overwhelming wave of righteous fury temporarily eclipsed his fear. It rose from somewhere deep in his chest, hot and acidic, burning away the ice of dread for one precious moment.

"You dare?!"

The Senior Disciple staggered back half a step, his boots splashing in the shallow puddles that had formed across the broken stone. His face was pale as bleached silk, drained of all color save for the thin trickle of blood still seeping from the corner of his closed third eye.

"We are disciples of the Cloud-Mirror Sect!" His voice cracked on the words, splitting between outrage and desperation.

"Our sect stands beneath the Zenith itself!" The invocation of his sect's ancient prestige—their position among the great powers of the cultivation world—was supposed to carry weight, to summon fear and deference. It echoed hollow across the marsh.

His voice rose into a shriek, raw and edged with hysteria.

"You killed them as casually as trampling ants!" Spittle flew from his lips, mixing with the rain that plastered his hair to his skull in dark, matted streaks.

He pointed at Shi Yan with a shaking hand, his sleeve heavy with water, arm trembling so violently the accusatory gesture looked more like a palsy.

"When the Patriarch learns of this, your soul will be refined and your bones scattered to the winds!" The traditional threat—spoken with the authority of a sect backed by centuries of power—tumbled from his mouth in a desperate torrent.

"Do you not fear death?!"

Oh, here is the classic line, hehe. A flicker of sardonic amusement passed through Shi Yan's mind like the ghost of a smile that never reached his face. Shi Yan merely tilted his head a fraction of an inch, the rain cascading off the brim of his bamboo hat in a thin, steady stream. Droplets pattered against his shoulders, hissing into steam the instant they touched his superheated skin.

He offered no villainous monologue. He offered no profound retort. His expression remained as empty as a mask carved from stone, dead eyes reflecting nothing but the storm's grey light.

Because… dead men didn't require explanations.

"I will personally send you to the Yellow Springs!"

Biting down viciously on the tip of his tongue, the Senior Disciple tasted the metallic tang of his own essence blood—thick, coppery, and laced with concentrated vitality. Pain flared sharp and immediate, but he welcomed it, using it to anchor his crumbling focus. He swallowed it aggressively, the precious fluid burning a path down his throat, forcing the potent, life-force-rich essence directly into his Dantian. The lifeblood ignited the dregs of his remaining Qi like oil poured onto dying coals.

A brilliant, white-hot aura exploded from the youth's body in a blinding surge, vaporizing the falling rain into a dense curtain of fog within a three-meter radius. The sudden heat distorted the air, creating shimmering waves that rippled outward. The oppressive cold of the storm recoiled from the sphere of radiant energy, and the stench of scorched moisture filled the space.

This was the true hallmark of Tier 2: Kindling. The internal furnace roared to life, its flames no longer confined within the body but spilling outward, transferring elemental power to the immediate environment. The temperature spiked, the humidity evaporated, and the very atmosphere bent to the cultivator's will.

Ohhh, a forceful breakthrough in the fight? Shi Yan's eyes squinted slightly, the first hint of genuine interest flickering behind the cold mask of his expression. His analytical mind cataloged the phenomenon—emergency combustion of life essence to temporarily elevate power output. Desperation tactic. High cost. Limited duration. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Cloud-Rending Ascendant Strike!"

The Senior Disciple launched himself off the bedrock with explosive force, cracks spiderwebbing through the stone beneath his feet from the sheer output of Qi-infused strength. His footwork was genuinely breathtaking—a high-tier sect movement art that caused his body to blur and split into three distinct afterimages, each glowing with deadly, white-hot Qi. The illusions moved in perfect synchronization, their feet skimming across the mud and water without disturbing the surface, spectral and impossibly graceful.

To a normal cultivator relying on Qi-sense—the spiritual perception that detected energy signatures rather than physical forms—the attack was a nightmare. All three images radiated identical lethality, each one burning with the same murderous intent, the same concentrated spiritual pressure. Choosing wrong meant death.

To Shi Yan…

Illusions don't displace mass.

He didn't look at the glowing white swords arcing toward him in perfect, synchronized strikes. His eyes dropped instantly to the ground, tracking the black mud with the cold efficiency of a hunter reading tracks. Only one set of footsteps was splashing through the water, sending ripples expanding outward in concentric rings. Only one shape was physically indenting the muck, the wet earth compressing and shifting under real weight, leaving shallow depressions that filled immediately with murky water.

Center vector. Coming in high.

The Senior Disciple closed the distance in an instant, the gap collapsing with terrifying speed. All three illusions converged back into a single, devastating strike, the afterimages folding inward like closing jaws.

He poured every remaining drop of his white-hot Qi into the tip of his longsword, the spiritual energy compressing and condensing until the blade's point glowed like a miniature sun. The technique created a localized drill of compressed energy, spinning at impossible speeds, specifically designed to pierce through the reinforced hides and bone plates of heavily armored demonic beasts. The air screamed as the energy tore through it.

His trajectory is locked.

Shi Yan's mind processed the variables in the span of a heartbeat. On this terrain, with my boots submerged in slick mud, dodging a Tier-2 targeted strike will compromise my footing. The wet earth would give way, his momentum would falter, and he would lose the critical split-second needed to counterattack. I cannot evade without losing the kinetic advantage.

So, I trade.

Instead of stepping back, Shi Yan violently rotated his torso, his muscles coiling and releasing like a compressed spring. He stepped directly into the path of the incoming strike, closing the distance even further, his boots splashing through the thin layer of bloody water that covered the stone. He pulled his stolen jian back to his hip in a compact guard, the blade angled parallel to his body, leaving his center wide open—a target too tempting to ignore.

And he simply raised his left arm, the heavy iron-plated vambrace catching the storm's dim light as it moved into position.

The Senior Disciple's eyes lit up with a flash of desperate triumph, a manic gleam cutting through the glaze of exhaustion and terror.

He's trying to stop an immortal technique with an iron bracer?! Fool! The thought rang triumphant in his mind even as his body began to scream warnings he no longer had the strength to heed. The Senior Disciple sneered—a vicious twist of his lips—while resisting the urge to cough up the blood rising in his throat, the metallic taste thick on his tongue.

At the same time, the white-hot Qi drill slammed directly into the black-iron vambrace strapped to Shi Yan's left forearm with the force of a meteor strike.

The impact was deafening—a thunderous crack that echoed across the marsh, sending a shockwave rippling through the rain-soaked air.

The sheer spiritual temperature and rotational kinetic force of the immortal Art immediately overwhelmed the mundane metal. The iron groaned—a deep, resonant sound like a bell tolling its own death—before turning cherry-red in a fraction of a second, the heat spreading through the metal faster than thought. Then it catastrophically shattered into dozens of jagged shrapnel pieces, fragments spinning outward in a glittering spray, some embedding themselves in the mud, others hissing as they disappeared into puddles.

The tip of the glowing sword tore through the failing armor without resistance, the superheated edge biting deeply into the dense, obsidian-like muscle of Shi Yan's forearm. Skin split, flesh parted, and blood welled immediately—dark and thick, steaming in the cold air.

Tsk! A burst of intense, searing pain flared up his nervous system like lightning racing along a wire, white-hot and immediate. The cultivator's blade threatened to sever the bone entirely, the edge grinding against the ulna with a sensation that made his teeth clench involuntarily.

But it didn't.

Because Shi Yan's 110-Physique—muscles enhanced to an inhuman density by the Black-Iron Body Art—actively clenched around the intruding steel like a vice. The extreme muscular fibers contracted with crushing force, wrapping around the blade's edge and trapping it instantly. The forward momentum arrested completely, the sword held fast as if it had been driven into solid stone rather than flesh.

The blade stopped mere inches from reaching the critical bone marrow, the cultivator's supreme technique frozen mid-strike.

"W-What?!" the Senior Disciple gasped, his voice strangled and disbelieving. His eyes widened in horror, the whites visible all around the irises. His supreme final strike—the technique that had felled demon beasts and enemy cultivators alike—was entirely halted inches from his target's face, rendered impotent by something that should have been impossible. He tried to pull the sword back, yanking with desperate strength, his shoulders straining, but it was physically anchored in the mortal's flesh.

The blade didn't budge even a millimeter.

Shi Yan's dead eyes stared directly into the Senior Disciple's horrified face through the curtain of rising steam, pale and unblinking, devoid of mercy or hesitation.

He didn't show a single flicker of pain—no grimace, no flinch, no acknowledgment of the blade buried in his arm. His expression remained utterly flat, empty as a corpse's. He simply compartmentalized the structural damage to his left arm, relegating the screaming nerve signals to a distant corner of his awareness, transferring ninety percent of his cognitive focus to his right hand.

Checkmate.

With the cultivator's momentum completely spent—his Qi exhausted, his stance overextended, his weapon trapped—his entire torso was presented as an unprotected target, ribs and organs exposed with no guard, no defense, no avenue of escape.

Shi Yan then executed a flawless, frictionless thrust with the mechanical precision of a piston firing.

The silver-tasseled jian in Shi Yan's right hand blurred forward, driven by the monstrous kinetic output of his peaking attributes. The blade moved faster than the eye could track, a silver line drawn through the rain.

The tip pierced straight through the Senior Disciple's lower abdomen, parting the rain-soaked fabric of his robes as easily as mist. The steel punched through skin, muscle, and the fragile spiritual construct of his Dantian—the sacred core of his cultivation.

It shattered his Dantian completely, the stored Qi detonating inward in a silent implosion of wasted potential. The blade continued its path without slowing, angling violently upward at a calculated trajectory. It tore through the diaphragm, shredding the tough membrane, and punctured the bottom of the cultivator's heart. The organ spasmed once, blood flooding the pericardial sac, before the blade exited cleanly through his left shoulder blade with a wet, hollow sound.

The white-hot aura surrounding the senior disciple was instantly snuffed out like a candle in a hurricane, the brilliant light collapsing inward and vanishing. It was replaced only by the freezing, uncaring dark of the swamp, the cold rushing back in to fill the void, rain falling once more in heavy, indifferent sheets.

The man's mouth filled with blood—hot, thick, and choking. It spilled over his lips in a dark cascade, staining his chin and dripping onto his chest. He stared down at the blade buried in his torso, the silver guard pressed flush against his abdomen, the tassel hanging limp and soaked. Then his gaze lifted slowly, agonizingly, to meet the emotionless ghost who had dismantled his juniors… with ease… a mortal. His eyes were wide, filled with incomprehension and the creeping shadow of death.

"You... what... are..." The man couldn't finish the thought. His voice was a wet rasp, blood bubbling between his teeth, each syllable weaker than the last. His legs buckled.

Shi Yan ripped the sword out in one smooth, clinical motion, the blade sliding free with a wet schlick. Blood poured from the wound in a hot rush, steaming as it mixed with the rain. He planted his boot squarely on the cultivator's chest—firm, unyielding pressure—and kicked him backward into the mud with contemptuous efficiency.

The Senior Disciple's body hit the ground with a heavy, graceless splash, limbs sprawling at unnatural angles. His head lolled to the side, eyes staring sightlessly at the storm-dark sky, rain pattering into his open mouth. The mud and water embraced him like a grave, filth seeping into his once-pristine robes.

[Entity Slain: Cloud Mirror Sect Senior Disciple] [Cultivation Resonance: Furnace-Core / Kindling (Tier-2 Early)] [+1, 500 Dao Embers] The notifications flickered across Shi Yan's peripheral vision, glowing faintly before fading into the background of his awareness with mechanical indifference.

The silence of the swamp rushed back in, broken only by the steady drum of the freezing rain—a soft, endless percussion against stone, mud, and flesh. The wind had died to a whisper, the storm settling into a cold, patient rhythm.

Shi Yan took a slow, deep breath—measured, controlled—and mentally disabled the Black-Iron Body Art with a thought.

Instantly, the boiling heat radiating from his skin vanished, the oppressive warmth bleeding away into the cold air like smoke dissipating.

The thick, throbbing black veins—geometric patterns that had pulsed beneath his pale flesh like living architecture—receded beneath the surface, fading from view as the technique released its hold on his body. The sudden drop from 110 stat points back to his baseline 55 hit him like a physical blow, a violent decompression that sent his internal systems into momentary shock.

"Ughh!" A wave of intense nausea surged through him, his stomach clenching violently, bile rising in his throat. Muscular ache washed over his entire frame—a deep, bone-grinding fatigue that made every fiber burn. The pain specifically amplified in his lacerated left forearm, the torn flesh screaming now that the technique's numbing heat no longer suppressed the nerve signals. Blood dripped steadily from the wound, pattering into the puddles at his feet.

He clenched his jaw hard enough to make his teeth ache, forcing his posture to remain upright through sheer willpower. His shoulders stayed square, his spine straight, refusing to show weakness even to the empty marsh.

He had used the art strictly within the safety parameters, shutting it down before catastrophic damage could occur, preventing severe cardiovascular collapse or organ failure. But the trade-off he had made with his left arm—using it as a sacrificial anchor to trap the cultivator's blade—would require a targeted Dao Ember expenditure later. The muscle fibers were shredded, the wound deep enough to compromise function.

[Vessel Status: STABLE (Minor Structural Damage Detected)] [Sieve Drain Normalized.] [Current Dao Embers: 35, 775 Dao Embers]